Page 79 of All for Love

I tossed a piece of garnish from my plate at her. We’d inhaled our food between our first coffees and our second, but thankfully, I’d left the garnish and they hadn’t collected my plate yet so I had the ammunition I needed.

She ducked and laughed, then shot me a sheepish smile. “Fine. You’re not mopey or star-crossed. You’re heartbroken and tragic.”

“Jeez. Way to make me feel better.”

Ellora’s gaze filled with sympathy as the corners of her mouth turned down instead of up. “I’m sorry, babe. It’s true, though. Isn’t it? Unless there’s another answer I’m missing.”

I shook my head. “There isn’t. I honestly don’t know when it turned from ‘I hate you but I need you’ sex to just ‘I need you’ sex, but I think about him all the time. I crave understanding him better as a person. I fall asleep missing him at night and I wake up only so I can rush to the office and see him.”

“Oh, boy.”

“Yep. Oh, boy.” I could think of a few other expressions to use, but that pretty much summed it up. “There’s so much more to him than I realized before. The whole arrogant-dick thing seems to mostly be an act. An expectation he’s learned to live up to, but deep down, he’s a good guy.”

Ellora’s head pulled back and her brow furrowed like she didn’t know if she believed me. “How do you know the good-guy thing isn’t the act? I hate to say it, but he could be playing you. I don’t know why he would, but people like him think differently than the rest of us.”

“There are no people like him. I promise. He’s not playing me.” I thought back to Tuesday morning in his office, to the way his voice had sounded while he’d talked and the genuine emotion in it and in the way he’d leaned on me for comfort. “I know it’s hard to believe, but little by little, he’s been taking down his walls.”

“And?”

“And everything he’s showing me has only made me like him more,” I admitted in a small voice. “I’m scared, Ellora. I don’t think we’re going to be able to go back to how things were before, and that’s if we ever manage to actually end things between us for real.”

My friend’s expression smoothed out, the look in her eyes serious. “You two need to get a handle on this before Christmas. This may not be the advice you want to hear, but I’m going to give it anyway.”

“I’m all ears.” At this point, I was open to anything. “What have you got for me?”

“Tell the truth.” Okay, except that. I wasn’t open to that, but Ellora pressed on. “Go into the holidays with everything out in the open. Let them all see how you are together. It’s not that weird. Your parents will get over it.”

I paused for a long moment. “And if they don’t?”

Ellora went quiet in turn, pausing. “I’m not sure.”

A deep knot of worry had been growing in my gut for days now, and I tried to shake it off, but it just wasn’t working. Today was my last day at their office, and Kody was taking me out on a proper date afterward so we could spend some quality time together and decompress.

I was looking forward to it more than I cared to admit, but at the same time, I couldn’t shake the feeling like something was coming. A freight train was barreling toward this fragile state of peace and quasi-happiness Kody and I had achieved, and I wasn’t sure we were strong enough to withstand it.